Badlands Daily: May 9, 2025 – Popes, Pardons, and Political Power Plays

In this fast-paced Friday edition of Badlands Daily, CannCon and Chris Paul cover a tidal wave of headlines that span global geopolitics, U.S. legal drama, and institutional hypocrisy. The show opens with a breakdown of Pope Leo XIV’s historic election, the first American Pope, and dives deep into his past controversies, ideological leanings, and unexpected prediction by Steve Bannon. Trump’s muted reaction and the pope’s alignment with globalist views raise eyebrows, especially amid past abuse cover-up allegations from his time in Peru.

The conversation shifts stateside to Victory Day in Russia, where Trump’s absence contrasts starkly with the parade of BRICS-aligned world leaders in Moscow, while tensions with Ukraine flare amid drone strikes. Back at home, the hosts unpack the bait-and-switch surrounding Ed Martin’s removal as U.S. Attorney for D.C., revealing Thom Tillis as the scapegoat and Judge Jeanine Pirro as the flashy replacement. Yet Trump’s strategic redeployment of Martin as pardon attorney and director of the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group hints at long-game maneuvers against the regime.

The duo tackles a storm of stories: RFK Jr.’s controversial Surgeon General pick, the FBI’s criminal probe into Letitia James, the staggering failure to locate 95,000 migrant children, California Democrats walking back their decriminalization of child prostitution, John Fetterman’s bizarre mental spiral, and Biden’s humiliating cognitive flops on The View. They also question James O’Keefe’s underwhelming Epstein exposé and discuss how institutional rot infects everything from the courts to Congress to the FBI.

With brutal honesty and dark humor, CannCon and Chris Paul cut through the narrative clutter to expose the controlled ops, power plays, and fake facades holding the current system together.